One of my very good friends and I have made a pact – should we find ourselves elderly and alone, we’re going to be flatmates. The plan came about when I was talking about my grandmother. She had resisted a move to a retirement village many years before and at age 89, had few friends still alive and was lonely. My friend (who is an occupational therapist and often works with elderly people) and I decided that there were many benefits in living with someone in your twilight years, aside from the obvious 4pm gin-and-tonics-and-Gossip-Girl-sessions companionship (think financial, security, health benefits). We’ve already thought through some details (while we still have all our marbles).

Which brings me to The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt. It’s the story of women who find themselves ‘alone’, albeit in different ways.  At the centre is Mia, a poet who has left her husband after discovering he was having an affair, or as he termed it, a ‘pause’ –

“Sometime after he said the word pause, I went mad and landed in the hospital. He did not say I don’t ever want to see you again or It’s over, but after thirty years of marriage pause was enough to turn me into a lunatic whose thoughts burst, ricocheted, and careened into one another like popcorn kernels in a microwave bag.” Continue reading →